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title Getting Started with ev3dev
categories docs getting-started
  • Table of Contents {:toc}

So you are ready to try out ev3dev. Great!. Here are step-by-step instructions to get ev3dev up and running on your EV3.

First, here are the things you need before starting:

  • A LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Intelligent Brick (obviously).
  • A microSD or microSDHC card. microSDXC is not supported (you might be able to get it to work, but it will operate at reduced speed). This means that cards larger than 32GB are not supported. Also look at the speed class rating. Class 10 is the fastest, but slower speeds will work just fine. Ultra High Speed (UHS) classes are not supported (again, they should work, but not at the rated speed).
  • A computer with an adapter for the SD card. You will need administrator user permissions on this computer.
  • A way to communicate with the EV3. This can be one of the following:
    • USB cable (the one that comes with the EV3)
    • USB WiFi dongle
    • USB Ethernet (wired) dongle
    • Bluetooth

IMPORTANT: The instructions on this page only apply to releases dated Oct. 2014 or later. For earlier releases (i.e. wheesy "Latest Release"), see Getting Started v2 on the old wiki. These older releases are no longer supported.

Step 1: Download the latest ev3dev image file

Releases are posted on GitHub. Follow the link and download the latest Test Release image file. Downloading the .zip file is recommended for Windows/Mac and the .xz file is recommended for Linux. The .xz is smaller, but it requires that you have additional software installed on Windows/Mac to decompress it (such as 7-Zip on Windows).

Step 2: Copy the image on to the SD card

IMPORTANT: THIS WILL ERASE EVERYTHING ON YOUR SD CARD! BACKUP YOUR FILES IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO LOOSE THEM!

There are a vast number of ways to do this, so pick the one from the list that sounds the easiest to you:

TIP: For more detailed information and more alternatives, check out this page for RaspberryPi. Much of the information there is applicable to ev3dev.

Step 3: Boot ev3dev

Put the SD Card in your EV3 and power it on. At first, you will see the MINDSTORMS boot splash and the red LEDs will be on. This is immediately followed by the ev3dev boot splash and the LEDs changing to orange. The left LED indicates CPU activity and the right LED indicates disk (SD card) activity.

Shortly after the ev3dev boot splash, the screen will go blank and then eventually say "Debian GNU/Linux 7 (wheezy)". Any time after the screen goes blank, you can press any of the directional buttons (up, down, left, right) to toggle displaying boot messages. (Plymouth is currently broken, so no boot messages for now.)

The first boot will take a little longer than subsequent boots because the EV3 has to create a unique SSH host ids and take care of a few other housekeeping items.

When the boot is complete, the LEDs will turn green and you will see something like this on the screen:

{% include screenshot.html source="/images/brickman/main-menu.png" %}

Troubleshooting tips if your EV3 won't boot:

  • Make sure nothing is plugged into the EV3 (USB/sensors/motors/etc.)
  • Try writing the image to the SD card again.
  • You may have a bad/incompatible SD card - try a different SD card.
  • Check the condition of the EV3 batteries.

Step 4: Setup a network connection

There are lots of choices here. Your choice depends on what type of connection you want to use and on the OS of your host computer, so pick the one that applies:

  • Ethernet over USB (just requires the USB cable that comes with the EV3)
  • USB Ethernet dongle (as in the kind with an RJ45 connector)
    • If your network has a DHCP server, this will "just work". See brickman docs for more info.
  • USB WiFi Dongle
    • Hopefully you can figure it out. I'm putting off writing detailed docs until brickman is a bit more stable.
  • Bluetooth
    • For now, see instructions here. Bluetooth via brickman is comming sooner or later.

Step 4.5: Make sure the firstboot script ran correctly

Recently, some users have reported problems that are releated to the firstboot script not running correctly. Please verify that the items in this list are correct. If not, leave a comment to help us figure out what is going wrong.

Step 5: First things to do with ev3dev

Here are some suggestions of some things you should do to get your EV3 setup.

Change your root password

root@ev3dev:~# passwd
Enter new UNIX password: 
Retype new UNIX password: 
passwd: password updated successfully

Set up a new user

Replace user with your actual user name and First Last with your real name (if you want it on the EV3 - you can leave it blank too). Don't miss the command to assign groups hiding at the end.

root@ev3dev:~# adduser user
Adding user `user' ...
Adding new group `user' (1001) ...
Adding new user `user' (1001) with group `user' ...
Creating home directory `/home/user' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Enter new UNIX password: 
Retype new UNIX password: 
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for user
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
	Full Name []: First Last
	Room Number []:    
	Work Phone []: 
	Home Phone []: 
	Other []: 
Is the information correct? [Y/n] y
root@ev3dev:~# usermod -a -G sudo,ev3dev,plugdev,audio,video,input,bluetooth user

Set the time zone

root@ev3dev:~# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Then just follow the instructions on the screen.

NOTE: The EV3 does not have a battery backup for the realtime clock. Whenever you remove the batteries, the clock will be reset. If the EV3 is connected to the Internet, the clock will be automatically set via NTP, otherwise, you can manually set the date/time with the date command.

Set the locale

You can skip this if en-US is OK.

root@ev3dev:~# dpkg-reconfigure locales

Grow your root file system

The ev3dev image is only ~900MB so that you don't have to wait so long while writing the image to the SD card (and also so it will fit on a 1GB card). This means that you have some unused space on your SD card that you can reclaim. This command will expand the root file system partition to use the rest of the free space on your SD card.

root@ev3dev:~# lvextend --extents +100%FREE --resizefs /dev/ev3devVG/root /dev/mmcblk0p3

IMPORTANT: Don't wait until you get an error that your disk is full before doing this. You need some free disk space available in order to run this command.

Update packages

Make sure your EV3 is connected to the Internet first. Updating the packages for the first time will take minutes. The duration depends on the speed class of the SD card and on the updates involved.

root@ev3dev:~# apt-get update
root@ev3dev:~# apt-get upgrade
root@ev3dev:~# apt-get dist-upgrade

If a new kernel package is installed, you will need to reboot.

root@ev3dev:~# reboot

Step 6: Do something awesome

This will be where we tell you how to use the EV3's main functions, and how to write programs. We are still learning, so everything here should be considered experimental and subject to major changes.

Using the EV3 hardware drivers

Here are some guides for using each of the major components.

Writing programs

There are a number of programming languages available to use. The brick can run almost all languages that any other Linux distro can, so your favorite language is probably supported. Language bindings have already been written for some languages:

If the language you want isn't listed, you still can use it, but you'll have to do more of the heavy lifting yourself using the guides above. Once you get the hang of it, you can even write your own interface library and have it listed here!

Step 7: Calling it a day

When you are ready to wish your EV3 goodnight, turn if off by pressing the back button from the main menu in brickman and selecting Power Off.

{% include screenshot.html source="/images/brickman/shutdown-menu.png" %}